The triathlon that we thought about just riding our bikes too.

And then we each thought “I don’t want to carry all that stuff on my bike,” and wisely decided to drive.

This was the first local triathlon, a nice easy sprint, and we were so proud to take part. Our local bike shop ran the thing. It was small, first year and all, casual and a lot of fun.

I was terrible in the lake. I’m always terrible in the swim.

Don’t get me wrong, I can swim, I’m not a threat to drown or anything, but I’m not a distance swimmer. Lately I’ve been getting advice from a very patient coach. And it probably helped for about 100 meters. It all comes down to breathing and how I tend to not do that.

You know, while riding or running, if you don’t breathe you just stop moving or remind yourself about the in-and-out nature of respiration or, at worst, black out. In the water, when the body realizes the lungs aren’t breathing correctly the lizard part of your brain tends to take over. At that point, my swim is basically over. So, I’m terrible in the swim.

Apparently, though, I was third on the bike course. (I do not know what is happening.) I’ve been riding pretty well lately, but that is a surprising result, if the times were accurate. The route was basically my home roads, though, so that’s probably part of it.

I would pass the occasional person, give them the “Good job!” and warn them of a pothole just ahead. That’s probably annoying in retrospect.

Didn’t have a very good run. I’ve only run that route once before, last weekend, and didn’t think it was too hard. Foolishly, I forgot to add in the bike and swim exertion in that one trial run. But that bad run up the mountain let me meet a guy who said he was just two weeks from knee surgery. He’s racing next weekend, too. Make sure you tell the surgeon about this, I said, impressed.

“Yeah, doc, let’s get this thing fixed. By the way, I’ve run in two sprint triathlons the last two weekends.”

On the way down the mountain I ran into a guy who was here just to measure himself for an upcoming Olympic distance race he’s going to do. Don’t think he was too pleased, so I spent the last quarter mile of our run trying to convince him that this will scale up well.

Now this one, she had a great race. She’s clearly in mid-season form, having finished just outside the podium:

Later, trying on my sweet new tri shirt: